Getting the Bank to Say Yes! An Interview with Greg Brister

In our interview with real estate investor, Greg Brister (13:38 minutes), we get into how to deal with your banker in order to get your loan closed. Learn what due diligence you need to do and how to prepare your documents before you walk in the door of the bank. Greg also walks us through all the preparation he goes through to get the bank to say yes and finance his deals. To supplement his interview, you can download his presentation containing all the paperwork discussed above –> Get Your Banker to Say Yes

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Great interview here Josh! Very insightful! A thoroughly organized business packet is the way to go to the bank, and have investment properties sealed or approved by them! Greg, you’re our man! Learned a lot of valuable things from this interview.

Who cares what the bank will say? Most of the best ventures in real estate were done with out the bank,as a matter of fact bank participation guaranties a failure. About 1985 they were giving way toasters to get in to the real estate lending business in 1987 they got a share of the market in 1990 they brought the market to its knees. They did the same thing until 2006 and look at the results ( if you want me to go to the 70s and 60s not problem either).Stop giving them power (and your money)

I had a bank one time that wanted me to replace a new carpet in a 30 unit apartment building, after a MAJOR earthquake reinforcement rehab, because they had to have a”condition” of some kind. I told them to talk to me in a week when the “new” carpet will be installed, while I was thinking “I have to get way from their grip”……Well I syndicated the loan ($1,200,000), it cost me 10% less than the bank loan, it took the lawyers to draw the papers 2 days and 3 days to raise the money….it was 1987…I never used a bank since then…..

That’s great, Chris . . . not everyone has the knowledge to go and syndicate a deal from the beginning, though. Perhaps you can jump on our Syndication and other forum areas and can share more of your experiences for everyone to learn from! I’m looking forward to it.

Joshua
Thank you for you kind words.Don’t forget education and out of the box thinking is a MUST for everything…..I never took well to “this is the way we do it” in my mind was/is translating “we don’t want to do it”…..What I wrote sounds like a brave act yet at the time it was a VERY scary experience (it is always easier looking back from the end LOL). I did not mean to discount the value of information and your effort it is very valuable. I just think it is time for people in our industry to take control of our trade.In my opinion (only) the banks are in business because of us and not the other way around. I have no “beef”with them I just thought it will be useful to take a little bit of a different approach . Maybe people like you that are talented writers can start the movement. This is the time as there are many frustrated people out there that want to do business and they run in to the “bank” wall.

Chris, I am sure Josh would be open to doing a skype interview with you so you would have the opportunity to explain the process to us. I was just asking some more experienced investors how this worked just the other day. You sound very experienced an I would like to hear what you have to say about building a syndicated loan.

Chris – We do everything in our power at BiggerPockets, to empower people by providing information from various viewpoints in order for them to help educate themselves. You can bring a horse to water – as the saying goes….. I am serious when I ask you to step in and get more involved. Given what I know about your knowledge so far, I think you could bring a lot to the already voluminous knowledge that we have on the site already. Regards!

Joshua here are some thoughts….I think this is the right time for departure from the “conventional”ways…..Banks are difficult to deal with (for “whatever” reason), savings are not encouraged by the current interest rates available, (half of the earnings go to taxes and the rest cannot catch up with inflation), people are timid investing in stocks and other financial instruments given the current Wall Street experience and in general there is allot of money out here looking for the right investment. In three months from now I will be able to report and share with you how feasible it is to raise this kind of capital (in actual current terms) as I’m in the process of purchasing property currently, off course since most of them are bank owned or short sales I (like most people) have to hear from the bank when they will decide to proceed LOL Now this is an other very interesting topic for discussion – what is the bank thinking and what is the benefit of moving soooooo slow in selling inventory that is costing them money- (like taxes ,maintenance etc) ….So far no one seems to know what is their motivation…